Annotated Bibliography, Epistemological Alignment (PAB3a, ODU810, H. Gold)

Rhetoric > Technical Communication > Epistemological Alignment > Technical Communication 

Annotated Bibliography of:

Cook, Kelli Cargile. "Layered Literacies: A Theoretical Frame for Technical Communication Pedagogy." Technical Communication Quarterly 11.1 (2002): 5-29. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Accessed Web. 10 Oct. 2016.

This week’s annotated bibliography on epistemological alignment starts with Kelli Cargile Cook’s 2002 article, “Layered Literacies: A Theoretical Frame for Technical Communication Pedagogy.” She contends that technical communications is impaired because instructors with no experience writing commercial technical documentation have modularized and thereby underrated instruction. She calls for an “integrative pedagogical frame [to assist technical communication] instructors by defining the literacies that students need to be successful technical and professional communicators” (Cook).  In future papers, I will look at her proposal in the light of a Technical Communications Timeline from 1980-2005. I will also consider how my career as a professional tech writer, and my upcoming research as an academic, ties into the recent timeline, Philip Rubens’s definition of technical communication (which follows), and Cook’s pedagogic literacies for technical communications, among other academic milestones.

Click to enlarge

The modern timeline for technical communication spans from 1989 through 2005 and parallels my professional career as a technical writer, so I wondered how that tied into my academic work for this class so far. My first PAB referenced Eric McLuhan’s Laws of Media (McLuhan, E.), which viewed the result of media, including technical communication, based on these questions: “What does it enhance, what does it make obsolete, what does it retrieve that had [it made] obsolete, and what does it become when pushed to extremes?” My next paper (Paper #2) looked at defining this academic discipline by asking, “what is it?”  There I quoted Philip Rubens, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who in 1981 defined communication as “an empirical methodology that […] offers a way for defining audiences, purposes, and by extension, the domain of technical communication with a great deal of precision” (Rubens). Those experts provide a pathway to help study, or at least pose questions for studying, the roots of technical communication and discover its branches, methodologies, pedagogies, and scope.

Cook’s Six Literacies

Charles Babbage

Cook believes that technical communication began in the late nineteenth century, quoting Robert Connors’ observation that “early courses were developed and designed to improve engineering student’s reading and writing” (Cook). This aligns with my blog entry of 18 Sept 2016, where I noted that Charles Babbage (1791-1871) may be credited sowing the seeds of technical communication as documented in his “Passages from the Life of a Philosopher” where he details discussions with writers and thinkers of his day, or his account of the “proceedings of the Royal Society, 26^th May, 1859” (Regents of the University of Minnesota).

 

Although technical communication has been a discipline for at least a century, there remains “a lack of concise identification of literacies that technical communicators should possess.” (Cook).  There have been recent attempts to define how Western technical communicators can prepare “to meet the needs of the ever-evolving [global] technical communication field while preparing students of all national origins for the global work place” (Price). For example, there Han Yu, of Kansas State University, recently joined a growing sub-discipline to examine “verbal and visual usage in intercultural contexts” (Yu). He believes that this will help provide “different assessment methods, including their strengths, drawbacks, and potential.”

Next Steps

A clear definition of technical communication and the impact of its history will enrich my upcoming research. That, combined with my extensive professional experience in the field, may contribute to a growing integrative pedagogical frame to help clearly teach the discipline to new technical communicators.

Works Cited

Babbage, Charles. Passages from the Life of a Philosopher. London: Longman, Green, 1864.
Case, R. (Fall, 2002). Plato’s Premise: Fostering Student Autonomy. Thought & Action. NEA, Washington, DC., from http://www2.nea.org/he/heta02/images/f02p33.pdf

Cook, Kelli Cargile. "Layered Literacies: A Theoretical Frame for Technical Communication Pedagogy." Technical Communication Quarterly 11.1 (2002): 5-29. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Web. 10 Oct. 2016.

Fulkerson, Richard (Jun., 2005). Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 56, No 4 (Jun., 2005). Pp. 654-687. http://www.jstor.org.stable/30037890

McLuhan, Eric and Zhang, Peter. "The Interological Turn in Media Ecology." Canadian Journal of Communication 2016: 207-225. 12 Sep 2016.

Price, Tiffany E., and Mary-Lynn Chambers. "Globalization and the cultural impact on technical communication." European Scientific Journal (2016): 93+. Academic OneFile. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

Regents of the University of Minnesota. "Who Was Charles Babbage?" The Charles Babbage Institute. 2015. http://www.cbi.umn.edu/about/babbage.html. 24 Sep. 2016).

Rubens Philip M. (Mar., 1981). Technical Communication: Notes Toward Defining a Discipline. Department of Language, Literature and Communication, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, from nasa_techdocs. https://archive.org/details/nasa_techdoc_19810013425.

Selfe, Cynthis L., and Hawisher, Gail E. "A Historical Look at Electrroinic Literacy." Journal of Business and Technical Communication, July 2002: 231-276.

Skerrett, Allison; Bomer, Randy (Mar. 2011). Borderzones in Adolescent’s Literary Practices: Connecting Out-of-School Literacies to the Reading Curriculum. Urban Education, 2011 46: 1256. DOI: 10.1177/0042085911398920, http://uex.sagepup.com/content/46/6/1256

Yu, Han. "Intercultural Competence In Technical Communication: A Working Definition And Review Of Assessment Methods." Technical Communication Quarterly 21.2 (2012): 168-186. Education Source. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.